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Topic Review (Newest First)

11-03-10 03:01 AM

Clapoti

Some people don't need it maybe, but I do... and when it's really hot in summer I need it more than once a day depending what I do.

11-02-10 11:43 PM

Ska

Quote:

Some have concluded that deodorant is unnecessary
after forgetting it once with no social
repercussions, or are concerned about
antiperspirants containing aluminum, even
though both the National Cancer Instituteand
the Alzheimer’s Associationdon’t share those
concerns.

I'm going to call on this one. If I forget to put on deodorant in the morning, especially when it's hot out, I guarantee you I'll smell godawful by lunchtime. It's happened before. There's no mistaking that raunchy pit smell, and if Tom's of Maine can't get rid of it, I'll eat my sweats with some tabasco before I let this lady tell me that all I have to do is wipe my pits with a lemon wedge.

11-01-10 02:25 PM

xLAD23DERx

The smelly whore still uses a soapy washcloth on a daily basis

11-01-10 09:23 AM

Duckdog

No wonder my dad always said he never lived so good as when he joined the navy in WWII.

Hey now. I was a farmer for 15 years. I showered at least once per day...sometimes twice in the really sweaty times.

Well it wasn't the forties and you showered daily, so you aren't in the same boat.

11-01-10 09:08 AM

Duckdog

Hey now. I was a farmer for 15 years. I showered at least once per day...sometimes twice in the really sweaty times.

11-01-10 09:04 AM

RPhilMan1

That's just plain stupid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by idiots

“It’s a myth that people need a deep cleaning everyday.”

Yes, it's not a myth. It's a fucking preference.

I want to be clean. I work out and sweat my ass off four to five days a week. I'm going to use deorderant and I'm going to wash my body with soap and hair with shampoo. Technology has improved and allowed us to easily clean our bodies... I don't care if farmers didn't wash daily in the 40s. They stunk and they were fucking farmers...

A daily shower is a deeply ingrained
American habit. Most people would no sooner
disclose they had not showered in days than
admit infidelity. But Jenefer Palmer, 55, of
Malibu, Calif., cheerfully acknowledged
recently that she doesn’t shower or shampoo
daily and doesn’t use deodorant. Ever.

No, she does not work from home in pajamas.
In fact, Ms. Palmer, the chief executive of Osea,
an organic skin-care line, often travels to meet
business contacts at the five-star luxury
hotels where her line is sold. They might be
surprised to read that Ms. Palmer, a petite,
put-together brunette, showers “no more than

three times a week,” she said, and less if she
hasn’t been “working out vigorously.”

She contends that a soapy washcloth under
her arms, between her legs and under her feet
is all she needs to get “really clean.” On the go,
underarm odor is wiped away with a sliced
lemon.

Defying a culture of clean that has prevailed at
least since the 1940s, a contingent of
renegades deliberately forgoes daily bathing a
nd other gold standards of personal hygiene,
like frequent shampooing and deodorant use.

To the converted, there are many reasons to
cleanse less and smell more like yourself. “We
don’t need to wash the way we did when we
were farmers,” said Katherine Ashenburg, 65,
advertisement
advertisement
Joshua Bright for The New York T
Tara Freymoyer and Matt Merkel of Birdsboro, Pa., have both given up deodorant, to mixed reviews from friends and family.
3353484248357834230433
Great unwashed raise stink about being clean enough
Those who don't bathe regularly says it's better for skin, saves water

the author of “The Dirt on Clean: An
Unsanitized History.” Since the advent of cars
and labor-saving machines, she continued,
“we have never needed to wash less, and we
have never done it more.”

“I’m going to sound like dirty Katherine in this
article,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. I’m
still invited to dinner parties.”

Retention of the skin’s natural oils and water
conservation are two reasons Ms. Palmer and
others cite for skipping a daily shower. Some
have concluded that deodorant is unnecessary
after forgetting it once with no social
repercussions, or are concerned about
antiperspirants containing aluminum, even
though both the National Cancer Instituteand
the Alzheimer’s Associationdon’t share those
concerns. Shampooing as little as possible can
help retain moisture in dry locks and enhance
curl shape, argue adherents of the practice;
for some men, it’s about looking fashionably
unkempt.

Resist the urge to recoil at this swath of
society: They may be on to something. Of late,
researchers have discovered that just as the
gut contains good bacteria that help it run
more efficiently, so does our skin brim with
beneficial germs that we might not want to
wash down the drain. “Good bacteria are
educating your own skin cells to make your
own antibiotics,” said Dr. Richard Gallo, chief
of the dermatology division at the University of
California, San Diego, and “they produce their
own antibiotics that kills off bad bacteria.”

Some people have long complained that
showering too much makes their skin drier or
more prone to flare-ups of, say, eczema, and
Dr. Gallo said that scientists are just beginning
to understand why. “It’s not just removing the
lipidsand oils on your skin that’s drying it
out,” he said. It could be “removing some of
the good bacteria that help maintain a healthy
balance of skin.”

But Elaine Larson, a professor at the Columbia
UniversitySchool of Nursing with a Ph.D. in
epidemiology, cautioned that subway riders,
gymgoers and others who come into contact
with many strangers should consider soaping
up. “If it’s cold and fluseason, you want to get
rid of the stuff that isn’t a part of your own
normal germs,” she said.

Personal cleanliness is big business
Whatever the motivation, personal cleanliness
in the United States has long been big
business. Widespread advertisements address
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They seem to work: Adults younger than 24
use deodorant and antiperspirant more than
nine times a week, but even for older age
groups, usage never falls below an average of
once a day, according to Mintel, a market
research firm. Ninety-three percent of the
country’s adults shampoo almost daily, the
firm said. Reliable statistics for how often
Americans shower are hard to come by, said
Regina Corso, a senior vice president of the
Harris Poll. “People are going to be hesitant to
say they’re not showering every day,” she said.

But Todd Felix, a clean-cut-looking actor and
online producer at Sony who lives in Los
Angeles, was happy to report that he finds
deodorant unnecessary and antiperspirants
absurd. (To his mind, the latter is akin to
covering your pores in Saran Wrap.)

To keep his body odor in check, he takes a
daily shower with an unscented Dove body
wash, usually after the gym. But Mr. Felix, who
is in his early 30s and doesn’t want to be
taken for a hippie, is cautious about disclosing t
hat he doesn’t wear underarm protection to
people he dates. “When you tell a person you
don’t wear deodorant, you come across as,
‘Oh, how European, how natural, how funky,’ ”
he said.

The few times Mr. Felix has mentioned on a

date that he goes without deodorant, he said,
things have quickly turned, well, sour. “It’s
weird, but I don’t smell,” Mr. Felix will
announce. Then, he said, “the comment is
always, ‘You think you don’t smell.’ ” (Mr. Felix
admitted that he lives in horror of having the
rare fetid day.)

But Matt Merkel, an engineer from Birdsboro,
Pa., is sure he smells just fine. How? Recently,
Mr. Merkel, 29, told his mother and sister that
he gave up the old Speed Stick as a teenager,
and they were shocked. “I was like, ‘Smell me,
I don’t care!’ ” he told them, adding, “They
probably just thought I was still 13 or 14, and
doing that because somebody told me to.”

Standards are relaxing
America’s custom of rigorous cleanliness was
in full swing by World War II, at which point
most homes had acquired a full bathroom,
said Ms. Ashenburg, the author of “The Dirt on
Clean,” and intensified with postwar marketing
advertisement
advertisement

efforts. But standards are relaxing, at least in
some corners. An article in Parenting
magazine’s November issue suggests that
stressed mothers need not shower daily,
stating reassuringly: “The air is drier in the
winter, which means you need your skin’s
natural lubricants.”

More boldly, on a Facebook fan page for the
book “Run Like a Mother,”a bible for active
parents, Bethany Hoffmann Becker, a 32-year-
old paralegal from Hutto, Tex., posted this
week: “I get a lot of my runs in on my lunch
break at work so I am all about the baby wipes I just shower before going to bed.”

Meanwhile, sales of dry shampoo — a spray
used to prolong the time between wet lathers (
and perhaps) showers — “more than
doubled” from 2007 to 2009, according to the
NPD Group, a market research firm.

Recently, the Investment Banking Club board,
whose membership is made up of 20 percent
of the students at Columbia University’s
business school, sent a “friendly reminder” of
some “personal hygiene basics” to members
seeking jobs. One commandment: “Carry anti-
perspirant with you if you are worried about s-
weating.”

But some young would-be professionals are
blithely unconcerned about sweat or odor. “I
don’t feel I’m stinkier than the next guy, and I
know a lot of people who say the same thing,”
said Blake Johnson, 25, a law-school applicant
who just moved to Norman, Okla. “I never get
told I stink. When I tell people I don’t wear

deodorant, they are surprised to hear it.”

As if arguing his case in court, Mr. Johnson
went on: “When I was working in San
Francisco, in an office in the middle of a
prestigious law firm, I had to wear a shirt and t
ie all the time, and I think at some point my
boss would have been like, ‘There’s something
I’ve got to talk to you about ... everybody in
the office is noticing.’ ”

advertisement
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But no “talk” ever happened. Mr. Johnson, an
every-other-day bather who resembles the
late singer Elliott Smith, also confessed he lets
his shaggy hair get oily so he can style it the
way he wants. “Right now it’s cool to appear
like you don’t care about what you look like,”
he said. “You have to invest time, and often
money, into making it look like you’ve done
neither, or you can take the easy route, and
just don’t wash your hair for a week and a
half.”

John Wesley Wilder Jr., 30, a salesman at an
eyeglass store in Philadelphia, is not only a
convert to unwashed hair — he shampoos
only once a month with Head & Shoulders to
reduce frizz, he said — but also to what one
might call his personal perfume.

“I was getting used to not smelling like Old
Spice, and smelling like myself,” said Mr.
Wilder, who forwent underarm protection for

three years. However, this past summer’s heat
wave forced him to reconsider. “The moment I
didn’t shower, it was terrible,” he said. Now he
occasionally uses a natural deodorant.

“It’s a little different, but not bad,” he said of
his experiment, inspired by his concern about
the aluminum in antiperspirant, but also by
several roommates who went without. This “
wasn’t a terrible thing,” Mr. Wilder said,
though, he added with a laugh, “A couple of
them definitely should wear deodorant or
shower more.”

Indeed, those who try laissez-faire hygiene
need to brace themselves for negative
feedback. Tara Freymoyer, 26, a property
manager in Birdsboro, gave up underarm
protection after she started dating Mr. Merkel,
an abstainer. She has friends who “wrinkle
their nose and say, ‘You’re gross.’ ” But Ms.
Freymoyer, who shampoos with Herbal
Essences, persists, at least in part because of
advertisement
advertisement
Ryan Collerd for The New York Times
John Wesley Wilder Jr., a salesman at an eyelass store in Philadelphia, is a convert to natural deodorants and unwashed hair. He shampoos only once a month with Head & Shoulders out of "laziness," he said.

her fear that antiperspirant may cause cancer.
“Just for my pure health,” she said, “who cares
if I stink a little?”

Alice Feiring, a wine writer in Manhattan, joked
that autumn is her “season of nonbathing”
(she actually bathes four times weekly). “ ‘
Didn’t I bring you up differently?’ ” she said
her mother asks. “ ‘What will people think?’ ”

But Ms. Feiring, 52, is resolute. “I don’t like to
over-dry my skin,” she said. “It’s a myth that
people need a deep cleaning everyday.”

This story,"The Great Unwashed," first
appeared in The New York Times.